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Missionary Spotlight

We are Dean and Sue Zemke, missionaries to Japan since 1996. After three years of language training, we moved to Asahikawa, Hokkaido, where we minister at Chuwa Bible Baptist Church.

It has been a thrill for us, Rodney and Cathy Fitzsimmons, to serve the Lord in Gonaives, Haiti, since 1983. Our ministry here is to establish New Testament local churches through evangelism, discipleship, and training and ordaining national pastors. We have had the privilege of planting 13 churches, and our prayer is that the Lord will allow us to plant at least one new work every year as we work with men we are training.

We are preparing nationals through the teaching of God's Word in the Berean Baptist Bible School and Seminary which has an enrollment of 450 students. We established this school in the late 90s, and the Lord has given us great opportunity to instruct believers for service in local churches.

We raised our two children, Lydia and Joshua, here in Haiti. They now live in Indiana and are both married. We have five precious grandchildren. Both our son and son-in-law have been called to preach.

We are Paul and JoAnna Harmon, along with our daughter, Felicia, missionary church planters working in Uruguay’s interior. We are seeking to establish an independent, fundamental Baptist church in Durazno. Our desire is to reach out to families with the Gospel, see them baptized, and discipled. This will then enable them to reach their neighbors in an even more effective way.

I (Ethan Champlin) was born in the jungles of Suriname the first year my parents Darrell and Louise Champlin were here. I was two months premature and almost died, but the Lord spared my life for a reason. My mother led me to the Lord at the age of six, and I surrendered to the mission field when I was in the 8th grade. At that time, I also began praying for the Lord to give me a wife who was called to the same country where I would go. The summer after my freshman year in college, I visited Suriname and the Lord confirmed to me that this was where He wanted me to work. I also met Kim that summer when she was visiting Suriname with her parents, Bob and Liz Patton, on their "survey trip" of the field before they started deputation. When Kim later wrote to my parents (after her return to the US) sharing that she had surrendered to be a missionary, I was impressed. The Lord provided the funds for me to return to Suriname the following summer as well, the summer in which the Pattons arrived on the field. Well, a week after Kim's arrival in Suriname, we became engaged. Kim stayed on the field for almost 10 months studying the language and helping her parents when they started their first church.

Greetings from Dave, Betsy and Kevin McCrorie, presently doing church planting in Ontario, Canada. We appreciate the opportunity to have been sent through BWM since the early 1980’s. Our home sending church is Suburban Baptist Church, where we have been members since 1979. After graduation from Bible college, the Lord directed us to begin a church-planting ministry in Edinburgh, Scotland, where we spent 18 years of service. In December of 2002, God relocated us to Ontario, Canada, to continue with the needed work of evangelism, discipleship and church planting.

We have three older children (Brian, Lisa and Christy) with families of their own. Kevin is our youngest son, and he began Bible college in 2011.

We are the Facenda family, missionaries to South Korea. My name is Jonathan Facenda. My wife Rachael and I were married in April 2004. We have four children: Yae-Chan (his name means Praise Jesus), Yae-Sun (his name means Prophet of Jesus), Hyae-Lan (her name means Flowering Wisdom) and Hyae-Jin Joy. They are our natural-born children, but we have given them Korean names.

From 2003-2005 we served in Korea. We taught English, planted a church, taught in a Bible college, and did evangelistic work in the mountain villages.

Since our return to Korea, God has called us to the city of Gwang-Ju. Gwang-Ju is a city of 1.4 million people with no fundamental, gospel-preaching church to our knowledge.

The need is big, but we serve a bigger God!

We are Don and Debbi Johnson, church-planting missionaries in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

We began our ministry here in 1985 and joined BWM in 1989. We are working in a metropolitan area of over 320,000 people. Statistics inform us that on any given Sunday, only 6% of those people attend a religious service of any kind, including the cults. Consequently we have thousands of potential converts all around us.

Our culture is very secular and very resistant to the Gospel. Our mission church is a work in progress and has developed very slowly over the years. Nevertheless, the Lord allowed us to purchase our own building and to build our ministry to the point where we think it is about 75% of the way to being self-supporting.

You can see more of our ministry at our church website, www.gbcvic.org. For a look at the different ministries we are involved in, check this link: http://gbcvic.org/our-ministries/. We also have sermons and Bible studies available if you are interested.

Bernard and Bernice Dodeler have been church-planting missionaries to France since 1972 and training nationals for local-church ministries since 1986. In 1990, Bernard was given the responsibility of heading up the I.B.B.L., a seminary-level school under local church authority.

The Dodelers have been used of God to establish autonomous Baptist churches in Thionville (Northeastern France), Büchenbeuren (Germany), Laon (north-east of Paris), Mantes (Paris-area) and Vernon (Normandy). They also helped other missionaries learn French and establish their works.

Their home church is Heritage Baptist Church of Frankfort, Illinois. The Dodelers were appointed by BWM in 1996.

Two of their four children are in full-time service in France. Suzy is married to Pastor Samuel Briard of Thionville. Jeremie and Damaris are BWM missionaries. Nine grandchildren live on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

We are Benjamin and Katie Shore and kids (Kay Lee, Benson, Logan, Parker, Nelson and Mac). We are church planting in Loanhead, Scotland. Although our church plant is located in a village, we are in a heavily- populated area on the south side of the city of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. In fact, we are only five miles from the center of that large city. Edinburgh city limits are less than a mile from the community centere where we meet.

Beginning the church in July 2010, our church meets in the Miners Community Centre on one of the main roads through Loanhead. It is a great location for us. If you are interested in visiting our church website, you can find us at www.freebaptistchurch.org. You can also visit our family webpage, www.missionaryshore.com. We hope that God will burden your heart to partner with us in prayer for the people of Scotland. Thanks for your interest in missions.

We are Kieth and Linda Bloyd, and we have been with Baptist World Mission since 1987. We are church planters in Terni, Italy, which is about a one-hour drive due north of Rome. The city was bombed over 100 times in WWII, so tourists rarely come here. Our "claim to fame" is that we have the largest waterfall in Europe (man made in the 1500s), and the gun that was used to kill John F. Kennedy was fabricated here.

The church we started is called "Evangelical Baptist Church." It is comprised of both Italians and foreigners. It is situated about 300 yards from the hospital, close to two main roads. It is a pretty good location.

We are Tim and Kim Melton and family serving in Nagoya, Japan. Tim first came to Japan in 1965 with his parents who were missionaries and grew up here.

In 1999 we returned to Japan as short-term missionaries to replace Tim’s dad and brother during their furloughs. In 2002 the Lord called us to be full-time missionaries to Japan. After completing deputation, we arrived in Nagoya in 2005.

We are James and Amy Greenwood, church-planting missionaries in Buenos Aires, Argentina. God has called us here to plant independent Baptist churches by evangelizing the lost with the Good News of the Gospel, discipling the saved, and training national pastors and leaders.

James graduated from Bob Jones University in 1998 with a BA in Bible and in 2002 with a MS in counseling. Amy graduated from Bob Jones University in 1998 with a BS in elementary education. The Lord called us each to missions while attending Bible college. In April 2002 we were appointed with Baptist World Mission. We began deputation in February 2003, after completing an internship at our sending church – Hillsdale Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida. The Lord has blessed us with three lovely children – Jaden, Lauren, and Josiah.

We are David and Jean Potter. We have been ministering in Pécs, Hungary, a city of about 180,000, since 1999. We helped our coworkers, Jim and Valerie Knies plant the Bible Baptist Church in Pécs. The church in Pécs is now self-supporting and under the leadership of Béla Horvath, a national pastor. We have sent out a couple from our church, Gedeon and Yoli Olah, to plant a new church in Nagykanzsa, a city of about 60,000, to the west of us. Our ministry centers on training national leadership, for which purpose we operate a Bible institute. David also has been traveling to Beius, Romania, to teach in a Bible college there twice per month.

On February 8th the executive committee of BWM approved us as furlough replacement missionaries. We, Wayne and Dee Snyder, applied to BWM in January 2004, and arrived in Cambodia in June 2006. Our primary ministry was to the English-speaking people of Phnom Penh in street evangelism and at the International Baptist Church for English-speaking people. As opportunity allowed, we also discipled English-speaking Cambodians, and preached through an interpreter. We met and gave the gospel to English speakers from 91 countries.

Health considerations, now resolved, led us, with the approval of our sending church and Mission personnel, to redirect to the ministry of furlough replacement. Wayne graduated from Grand Rapids Baptist College and Seminary and has graduate work in education from Bob Jones University. He has been a pastor, a Christian school principal, a textbook rep for Bob Jones University Press, and a missionary in Cambodia. He speaks only English. Dee was raised in the Philippines as an MK and can speak Ilongo. As a nurse, she worked with a medical evangelism team that came to Cambodia. She enjoys working with children and has a burden for women. She has spoken to women at a marriage seminar in Cambodia.

We, Frank and Judy Musk, currently work as furlough replacement missionaries. We first went to Japan as missionaries in 1970 to work in pioneer evangelism on the northernmost island, Hokkaido. For a number of years, we worked in fishing villages along the Japan Sea coast. It was exciting to see one of those families get a burden to reach their own people. When they were transferred to a town with no church, they began a Bible study that has since grown into a church and has called its own pastor. In 1986 we moved to Asahikawa, the third largest city north of Tokyo, to work with a Japanese pastor to plant a church. When that church became independent, we moved to a location on the west side of town, and established the Chuwa Baptist Church and worked there until 2006. That work continues under fellow BWM missionaries, Dean and Sue Zemke.

For several years, my wife and I had an increasing burden for missionaries who needed to return to their country for furlough but had no one to step in to fill the “gap” to lead the church in their absence. In 2006 my wife and I began our current ministry. This is a growing ministry and has allowed us to fill in for missionaries in Albania, Okinawa, Asahikawa-Hokkaido, and Nagoya-Japan.

We are Matthew and Sachiyo Starin, church-planting missionaries in Okinawa, Japan. After serving for seven years on Okinawa as a United States Marine, God has called our family back to minister to the Okinawa people. We arrived on September 26, 2003. Currently, Matt is the missionary/pastor of Gushikawa Baptist Church.

For more information about our ministry and as a means to see how the Lord is working in Okinawa, Japan, please visit us at:

For us, the calling to Peru wasn't like a bolt of lightning. We visited many different mission fields, but the Lord had given us a burden and a love for Peru that wouldn't go away. Also, God had placed Romans 15:20-21 on our hearts, and we knew that He wanted us to give the Gospel to the unreached people groups. Also, God directed through our pastoral leadership and home churches.

Loren and I were both called into missions while on mission trips during our teen years. We were both in remote areas, and had the privilege of giving the Gospel and ministering where otherwise the people might not have heard.

His hand has been overwhelmingly evident in the work. We were thankfully surprised at how quickly He brought us to the field in the first place. For instance, while on furlough, we were praying that God would give us 50% of our needed support by the end of January 2007, after only 8 months of furlough. On January 27 we were still stuck at 33% after several months, but by the 31st, we had 54%! God did that kind of thing numerous times.

We are Ben and Lauren Childs, missionaries to Papua New Guinea. We have been a part of the Baptist World Mission family since the spring of 2005. Our burden is to establish independent Baptist churches in the needy country of Papua New Guinea. With our Lord’s help, we preach the Gospel to the lost, disciple believers, and train national leaders.

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Hello from Sunny South Africa. My name is Amy Blackburn and I am working in the Garden Route which is located on the southern edge of the continent of Africa. My ministry is working with children, teens and ladies. I arrived in South Africa in 2007 and began working in the city of Cape Town. In 2009 the Lord moved me to the Garden Route where I am currently serving. God is working here and it is an exciting ministry. If you would like to see a more personal view of my life here please feel free to check out my blog. The web address is: www.themissionarylifeofamy2.blogspot.com

We are John and Nancy Moore. We are beginning a new church in Johannesburg, South Africa, named New Hope Baptist. We have a good core group of believers who are growing in the Lord. Our most recent progress is in the growth of member involvement in outreach.

We "reproduce and replace ourselves." Our most valuable time is spent with believers, discipling them that they may do the work of the ministry (Eph 4:11-12). Our discipleship includes: the character of God, basic new believer, marriage, and parenting. Our church membership does more work now than when we began nine months ago. Thus our outreach is progressing as initially we worked with a few, and now those few are working with others. A man with whom we worked initially is now discipling another for the first time and may soon be ready to take the step of working with youth.

We use Bible tracts and have produced our own church literature. One unique resource unknown in our area that we use is sermon CDs. We take several sermon CDs with us in our outreach times and give people an opportunity to "visit" a service before coming for the first time.